Sample MLA Documentation Style

Fourth Edition


The Modern Language Association's. . .

. . .documentation style makes citing sources effortless with a series of parenthetical notes and a single "works cited" page at the document's end. Listed below are sample citations that one will use most frequently; however, for a complete guide to MLA style consult Bedford pages 706-21, or the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, third or fourth edition. This is the way that all sources in this class should be documented, or cited.


Quotations within the document's text are cited in parentheses containing only the author's name and page number (cf. Bedford 707-12):

Rushdie believes that "redescribing the world is the first step towards changing it" --to replace the migrant's "triple disruption" of place, language, and social norms with a new language of displacement and mongrelization (Prasch 312).

Or, if the author is named within the text, only the page number need be cited:

Jussawalla suggests that Rushdie is disavowing any solidarity with people of the Third World because he has essentially become assimilated into a British colonial citizen and has adopted an Orientalist perspective (112-4).

If more than one source by the same author is used, use an abbreviated form of the work's title:

He was accepted by the whites: "he fooled them into thinking that he was okay, he was people like us" (Verses 43).

End notes are used only for comments or explanation, never for citation. A Works Cited page appears at the end of the document. References are given in alphabetical order and the names of books either underlined or italicized (preferably the latter if you are using a computer); whichever you choose, use it consistently throughout (cf. Bedford 712-21), e.g.:

Works Cited

Jussawalla, Feroza.  "Resurrecting the Prophet: The Case of Salman, the Other-
     wise."  Public Culture Vol. 2 no. 1 (1989): 106-117.

Kennedy, X.J., Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Sylvia A. Holladay, eds. The Bedford Guide for College Writers. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin Press, 1993. Prasch, Thomas. "Contested Ground: Center and Margin in Rushdie's The Satanic Verses." Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. New York: Viking/Penguin, 1988.


Visit the MLA Gopher for a more complete list of citations.
Updated 26 March 1996 by G. R. Lucas